15 Chilling Movie Villains That Are Harrowing To Watch

A movie's villain is incredibly important, since they provide the story with its obstacles and stakes. They also come in many different forms; some are over-the-top pantomime villains, while others are deliberately positioned as likable and sympathetic. Then there are villains who are utterly horrifying and genuinely painful to watch.

While such disturbing villains don't make for easy viewing, they are usually the best type of movie villain. Intense antagonists of this kind are good for representing the film's themes and ideas, add stakes and real horror to proceedings and are also usually the kind of antagonist viewers will never be able to forget.

These following villains are exceptionally disturbing figures who were completely monstrous on virtually every level. While they are uncomfortable to watch, they are also uniformly brilliant characters and some of the most effective villains of all time. Many of these villains actually stole the entire film and overshadowed the heroes. In short, movie villains don't get much more unpleasant than these guys but they don't get much better either.

Worst of all, quite a few of these on-screen characters actually existed in real life...

Jordan Peele's brilliant horror satire Get Out presents us with one of the worst families imaginable: a bunch of sickening individuals who kidnap black people in order to use their bodies to host their elderly white friends. It's perhaps the cleverest slavery metaphor of them all.

All four members of the family are appalling, but Rose is by far the worst. It's clear the rest of the family are sinister from the start, but Rose appears to be on the side of her boyfriend, protagonist Chris Washington right up until she abruptly flips the switch. In a matter of seconds, she switches from a caring girlfriend to a vile psychopath.

The reason Rose is so disturbing is her ability to hide her evil from everyone, including all of us, so effectively. She is a fantastic actor and this is thanks to Allison Williams' superb, criminally underrated performance.

Once she drops the veil, it becomes clear she truly is as evil as they come; a cold, remorseless and chillingly calm psychopath who takes a clear pleasure in destroying the innocent Chris. She may have eventually had a painful demise, but given how appalling she was even that didn't feel like enough.